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Thursday, February 16, 2012

DIY colorful mobile, part 2.

Yesterday, I posted Part 1 of the steps I took to make my little one’s colorful mobile, so if you haven’t seen that post, go there first. I ended with sewing all the velum strips, so let’s start there.

Once I finished sewing the three sections, I taped them to the ceiling to see how it would look. Notice that the bottom few strips start to curl up…

The solution for that issue is fishing weights. I bought these at Walmart for under $4. I also had the mug hooks {also from Walmart, I think} for another project.

So I moved the three taped mobile pieces on the ceiling to the exact spot I wanted, right above the crib. I carefully took them down, but left the tape in place on the ceiling to give me a guide of where to hang the hooks. I drilled a pilot hole over the tape…

Then, because I wanted to try to not use any anchors {but I knew the hooks would fall right out of the plaster} I tried some joint compound in the pilot holes. The mobiles are really lightweight, but I knew that even just the hooks would fall out of the plaster ceiling. My hope is that the joint compound would dry/harden around the hooks making them secure in the ceiling, without any threat of the mobile falling on our daughter. I’ve yet to test how strong they are because I just finished this project, but I’ll let you know if this doesn’t work.

So this is the hole filled with wet joint compound…

And then I screwed the hooks into it {while it was still wet}, and left them alone for 24 hours to dry {according to the joint compound package instructions.}

In the meantime, I carefully tied a small fishing weight onto the end of each of the three pieces. I tied a bajillion knots to make sure that the weight wouldn’t ever fall off.

Then at the other end, I managed to tie similar sized loops to create a means to hang the mobiles. I made sure that the loop wasn’t just one layer of thread. You can see in the photo below that the loop is made of lots of layers of thread…

And that’s it, folks. Once your hooks are solid and dry, you can hang ‘em up proudly…

Here’s the full picture with the crib {bedding’s just temporary}. I love the lightness of the mobile…

And here’s a close up of the ends with the weights. Pretty…

And with more of the room, including the orange refinished changing table {post coming soon}…

More close-ups…

And this is the fun view our little one will have. Love it!

So there ya have it – the one project I knew I was going to do for the nursery, years before I was pregnant. I love the way it turned out, how inexpensive it was, and the relative ease of the project.

All the colors make me happy. Hopefully it will also make our little girl happy {and sleepy}! :)